


The Emperor's Hand

by EvilReceptionistOfDoom



Series: Hunters [9]
Category: Seirei no Moribito | Guardian of the Sacred Spirit
Genre: Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, Conspiracy, Corruption, Father Figures, Father-Son Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Human Trafficking, Hunters, Mild Gore, Minor Injuries, Moral Dilemmas, Post-Canon, Ribbon-chan, Secrets, Serious Injuries, Vigilante Justice, minor language, trouble brewing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 18:19:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9670469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilReceptionistOfDoom/pseuds/EvilReceptionistOfDoom
Summary: A Hunter's version of community service: killing really bad people.Featuring Sun as a very skilled seamstress, Jin as a stubborn and disobedient vigilante, and Mon as a worried father.Takes place several years after the show, directly beforeTraveler of the Blue Road(the seventh book in the series).





	1. Long Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sun sews a seam.

It had been a long night - a difficult night.  Usually the Hunters' opponents were easily defeated.  But every now and then, some savvy criminal or hired muscle turned out to be a worthy match, and then things could go sour quickly.    
    Tonight had been the latter case.  The target himself was nothing - a lecherous old man who happened to head the country's worst human-trafficking ring - but he had a lot of money, and he had invested it wisely.  When Jin arrived at the building, a warehouse in the industrial district of the city, he was anticipated.  That part wasn't unexpected.  The hunter had known the target was in Kosenkyo for only a short while, so he had pressed the investigation harder than prudent, and all his asking-around had naturally aroused suspicion.  Nor was he surprised at the sheer number of mercenaries waiting for him, since the man was richer than Croesus and had hundreds of connections to leverage.  What was unexpected was how many of these hired thugs were actual warriors, and that had turned the errand from something quick and simple into something really troublesome.  
    In short, he had not escaped this one without injury.  In nearly an hour of fighting, it could have happened at any time and been given by any of the dozens upon dozens of bodies the young hunter had to cut through to get to the old man in the warehouse's gallery.  He didn't yet know the extent or degree, but after dispatching the final bodyguard and slicing the target's evil head from his body, the hunter already could feel something was off.  Before Jin could return to the palace, however, he had to find the man's storage cellar and break the locks on all the filthy little boxes where his chattel were stored; then collect the ledger book and a few other pertinent records; and finally set fire to the warehouse to get rid of the bodies.  It was still a good two hours more before Jin at last began the three-mile walk back to Upper Ougi.  By then he had begun to feel lightheaded.  Now, limping wearily into the courtyard behind the hidden barracks to the tune of predawn birdsong, he wished he could just lie down and sleep right here on the grass.  
    Jin set aside his sword and the trafficker's papers, went to the spring and dipped out a bucket of water.  The first order of business was to wash off the blood.  That was the other irritating thing about these grisly sorts of missions.  All that blood would take ages to wash out, if it did at all.  And there had been plenty of times he was bleeding himself and didn't know it because those inconsiderate criminals had managed to spray around so much of their own blood.  If only it were easier to cut veins without severing arteries as well; then the blood would at least be more localized.  
    He took off his yukata and dumped several bucketfuls of water over his head, trying to mobilize the congealed blood.  He was feeling a bit nauseated now - not from the gore, which he was used to, but from fatigue.  Carefully he ran a hand over his scalp, neck, and back - the places he couldn't see.  His fingers found a gash in his lower back near the ribs.  There was another near the back of his knee, and a long, shallow cut across his stomach.  What a pain, he thought, scowling.  He took off most of his wet clothes, then tiptoed inside and to his room.  He had a needle and thread and some clean bandages in the bureau.  The sky was lightening; he had to hurry if he was to finish before sunup.  
    "Jin?  What are you doing?"  The puzzled voice made him freeze midway down the corridor and turn.  
    "Ohayo, Sun," he said cheerfully... almost.  He had never been good at faking pleasantry.  
    "How did you get that?"  
    "Get what?"  
    "The giant bleeding cut on your back?"  
    "Cut?  Huh.  I have no idea."  
    They looked at each other a long moment.  Sun glanced pointedly at the things his fellow hunter carried and back, then rolled his eyes.  "I'll come outside with you.  You're going to have a devil of a time trying to sew that up yourself."  
    Sun said nothing while he helped wash the back wound out more thoroughly.  He deftly knotted the thread and pulled it taut.  "Lie down," he said.  "This may take a while and I don't want you moving."  Jin did as ordered without comment.  On the one hand, Sun was a far better tailor than Jin, and there really was no way he could have stitched this particular cut up himself.  On the other hand...  
    "So what are you going to tell him this time?" Sun asked casually, interrupting Jin's train of thought.  
    "Same thing I told you."  
    Sun sniffed.  "Because feigned ignorance is so believable."  
    "He'll probably figure it out in a few days anyhow.  If not today.  Burned the place to cover my tracks, and Mon will know right away what that means."  
    "Who was it?"  
    "Some old swine running a slave ring.  Specialising in preteen girls."  
    "Sounds like the world is better without him.  And?"  
    "And about a hundred hired guards."  
    Sun finished tying off the final loop of thread and sat back.  "Is that the only one?"  
    "No... but I can take care of the others myself."  
    "Yeah, but you're a shit seamstress.  Fetch another bucket of water."  
    While he was sewing up the next laceration, Sun opined, "This is another occasion where one wonders whether you're the hero you think you are or just monumentally stupid."  
    "Someone has to take these people out, Sun."  
    "But do they?  Really?  So you killed a bad man; good job, hunter-san.  But isn't another just going to step up to take his place?  Maybe someone worse?"  
    "Then I'll kill him, too," Jin replied obstinately.  
    "And if this one has two hundred guards?  If he happens to hire someone better than you?  'So sorry, Okashira - I know my hand's gone, but I really don't know how it happened, I just woke up and it was gone.'  I'm sure that'll fly.  I'm looking forward to attending your funeral."  
    "I'm sure that Mon's okay with my doing this or he'd have put a stop to it already."  
    "So says you.  But even so - he can only turn a blind eye so long as it doesn't interfere with your duties to the Mikado.  I'd say this little scrape you got on your back is getting damn near the borderline."  
    "You don't have to help."  This resentfully.  
    Sun sighed.  "And have you die of an infection because you can't sew a straight seam?  I'll pass.  Roll over, let me get the last one."  
    Sun was content to let the discussion finish there, but his colleague had never been one to leave an argument without having the last word.  After a moment, Jin declared, "The real question you should be asking yourself is why we're not being assigned to stop people like this as a part of our normal work.  The Mikado doesn't seem to care that New Yogo is crawling with slavers, and Kosenkyo is probably the worst concentration of them.  He'll have us watch the house of a rival for weeks at a time, but a man who sells little girls to brothels isn't of enough consequence to fall under our purview?  How does that make sense?  What's the point of training up an order of elite assassins if you're not going to let them do anything worthwhile?"  
    "Because then you can kill your competition and maintain your dynasty indefinitely.  Obviously.  Why should the emperor give a fuck about slaves?"  
    "So now you're agreeing with him?"  
    Sun gave the thread a harsh yank, partly to pull the stitches closed, but also partially to shut Jin up.  "I'm not agreeing with anyone," he said calmly.  "You asked a question and I gave you the answer."  
    Jin scowled again.  "I don't like that answer."  
    "Doesn't change the fact it's true."  
    After a moment's pause, the younger hunter grumbled, "Aren't you done yet?"  
    "Do you want me to do a shoddy job?"  
    "No..."  
    "Then, as our leader would say, 'Shut up and use the opportunity to practice your patience.'"  
    This worked better than Sun expected.  Jin said nothing more until Sun had finished and knotted the end of the stitching tightly closed.  "That should hold well enough, but you're going to have real problems at training."  
    "I'll try to take it easy."  
    Sun gave a smug and slightly acid smile.  "Good luck with that.  'Jin, why are you stopping?  Are you a weakling?  Do you think your enemy will ever stop?'  'Oh, Okashira, so sorry, so sorry!  It's just I'm trying to take it easy today...'"  He laughed and disappeared into the barracks.


	2. Warning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jin talks back.

Two months later, as the first snow of the year was dusting the ground, the youngest of the hunters padded silently into the courtyard from the shadows of the forest.  It was several hours yet before dawn, but the snow made the sky a sort of mid-saturation grey rather than black, so that it felt more like morning than the middle of the night.  Jin had been investigating the entries in the ledger he'd confiscated from the slaver's warehouse, and he had just come from reconnaissance at the next place he planned to raid.  If things went well, he could take out another big boss before the week was through.  
    Mon was sitting on the back threshhold of the barracks.  
    "Okashira," said Jin, nodding as he made to walk past.  He was startled but didn't let on as much.  But Mon put up a hand to block his way.  
    "Sit down," he said.  
    "Sir?"  
    "Sit."  When his second obeyed, Mon said, "Where were you just now?"  
    "I went for a walk."  
    "Down to Lower Ougi?"  
    "Through parts of Kousenkyo, yes."  
    "Gathering information on your next unauthorised target?"  
    "I don't know what you mean, sir."  
    Mon sighed and sat back so that he was leaning on the doorframe.  "Jin.  This is a mistake."  
    The younger man said nothing.    
    "You're on duty today," Mon continued, by way of admonition.  
    "I know, sir."  
    "Remember what obligations come first.  For now, if you can carry on this crusade against the New Yogo slave trade without it getting in the way of your service to the Mikado, I'm willing to pretend ignorance.  But the instant it starts to compromise your ability to do the Mikado's work, I'm calling a stop to this, got it?"  
    Jin's brow furrowed, but he nodded once.  
    "I'm glad we understand each other.  I know your intentions are noble, but you have one priority and only one.  Anything else is a distraction."  
    At the word 'distraction', Jin found himself imagining the human merchandise languishing in a cold, damp warehouse in Lower Ougi while slave traders walked through the streets of the city unmolested, openly selling their wares, and suddenly the younger hunter couldn't hold himself back.  He knew better, but he spoke anyways.  "Even when 'the Mikado's work' consists of standing in the courtyard all day staring at sand?  ...Sir?"  
    Mon drew an annoyed breath.  "If the Mikado requires it, then nothing else matters.  He could order you to separate the individual sand grains by weight and your place would be to sort sand until the whole courtyard was empty, and even if your own family were being murdered in front of you, you would _still_ devote all your energy to sand and nothing else, because that was the Mikado's will.  Do you understand?" he said again, a bit more sharply.  
    "Yes, _sir_.  The country's falling to pieces for lack of governmental oversight, we've got slavers kidnapping people from the streets of Kosenkyo and thugs extorting protection fees from shopkeepers, but yes, I'll make sure I don't wake up too late to watch the Mikado's sand."  
    Mon struck him.  The younger man staggered a little at the force of it, but didn't protest, because, quite frankly, Jin knew he deserved it.  "Don't you dare speak to me that way again," Mon growled.  "Know your place.  To mock the Emperor is to mock a god.  I will not tolerate blasphemy."  
    "I apologize, sir," Jin replied through gritted teeth.  "I spoke out of turn-"  
    "-and you won't again, or you can count on watching sand for the rest of your goddamn life.  Get to bed."  
    The younger rose, bowed, and left, scowling the whole way.  Of course Mon was right, and furthermore, he had been stupid to speak disrespectfully to the man who allowed him more leeway than anyone else would ever have done.  But the emperor's ineptitude and thoughtlessness infuriated him in a way difficult to restrain, especially when he considered how much better a ruler Chagum, the crown prince, would be.  And Chagum was barely even a teenager!  The emperor had eight hunters; he might as well use them!  How did it make sense for the best warriors in the country to be standing around doing nothing - literally _nothing_ \- when the country, and the very capital, were drowning in crime?  The Mikado was either clueless, and did nothing because he didn't know of the problems, or he did nothing because he simply didn't care.  Mon was right about a hunter's duty being to the emperor and nothing else, but an emperor who did not work for the good of the nation couldn't be a god, no matter what his lineage, and was no emperor worth following.  Chagum not only cared about the interests of the country's citizens, but was actively working to improve their lot, despite his youth and inexperience.  That was what an emperor would do.  In fact, as far as Jin was concerned, the prince might as well already _be_ the emperor - many of the people thought so, too.  Chagum had Jin's loyalty; but Chagum's father had lost it years ago.


	3. Last Straw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jin crosses the line.

Mon allowed his second's vigilanteism to proceed, without comment or notice, for more than a year before something finally brought a screeching halt to the affair.  
    It was very late at night, or very early morning, when Jin returned from his self-assigned mission.  It had been another bloody night, despite the men he'd just killed were mediocre warriors.  The target himself had been quick as a lizard and difficult to kill.  The hunter's face, hands, and clothes were an abstract collage of blood spatters - the smear of one of the dying men falling against him, the haze of specks his target had breathed on him when Jin tried to question him, the usual chaotic constellations from dozens of fountaining arteries.  He felt sticky and disgusting, and was emotionally drained more than physically.  Not from guilt - there was no cause for guilt - but from mere proximity to people as horrible as those he had slain tonight.  As soon as he had rinsed the majority of the blood off at the spring, Jin went directly to the tiny bathhouse at the end of the garden.  A "bathshed", they called it jokingly, because it was so small.  On the other hand, it was theirs and only theirs, and it was a comfort knowing he wouldn't be disturbed even if he soaked for two hours straight.  
    Everything seemed to have gone fine.  He checked all over and found no hidden injuries.  The man was dead and so were his accomplices, and the man's house would have burned to the ground by now, taking the bodies with it.  Slowly the imagined grime and pollution washed away, and by the time he went to bed - about an hour before sunup - the young hunter was feeling relieved and glad to forget the entire sordid episode.  
    The day passed without incident.  The Mikado's sand remained safe.  
    Late that night, as Jin was getting ready to sleep, Mon appeared in the doorway of his second's room.  His eyes were ablaze, but his voice was cold when he spoke.  "Jin.  Come outside with me a moment."  
    The younger man followed obediently, wondering what on earth he'd done this time.  Mon did not stop in the courtyard, but kept going until the pair were far back in the trees, in the starless black of a cloudy, moonless night.  There he stopped.    
    "The man you killed last night," Mon said softly, "was a friend of the Mikado."  
    "That's impossible, sir.  The man I killed last night was a serial rapist and a murderer."  
    "And a powerful lord, with political and trade connections in both Rota and Sangal, and his sons had connections of their own.  The Mikado used those connections to influence the courts of both countries.  You have now destroyed that influence."  
    Jin did not respond.  Many things were swimming through his head right now, jumbled and conflicting.  Had Mon told Hibi Tonan or the Mikado who had killed Lord Kukurutan?  Had Jin been thorough enough covering up the evidence, making it look like an accidental fire?  The rest of the Royal Guard had no forensic ability whatsoever, but maybe the Mikado or the Master Star Reader had some secret resources that could track him down.  Maybe Mon's sense of duty to the emperor would override his concern for his junior officer.  Had the Mikado known what this man and his sons did for recreation?  Had he continued to associate with them in spite of that?  If the truth were to somehow come out, would it matter?  If Mon had informed on him, Jin could count on being put to death before the week was out, probably sooner, tomorrow or the next day.  Had they come to this private location to keep the other Hunters from knowing what the emperor was involved in?  Or what Jin had been doing for a year and half now?  Or was he being given a chance to escape?  Or would Mon allow him to fight for his life?  Or-  
    "You have nothing to say?  That's uncharacteristic of you."  Mon's tone was acid.  
    "Sir, I-"  The younger man let out a slow breath.  "Okashira.  Lord Kukurutan and his sons were evil men.  If you knew the depravity and the extent of-"  
    "You think I don't?"  
    Jin's mouth opened but no sound came out.  How could Mon have known?  No, that was a stupid question; he was the first and best of the Hunters, there was nothing beyond his apprehension.  Rather, how could he have known and done nothing?  
    "Jin.  I don't disagree with you that the Kukurutan family are best off dead.  I know more of what they've done than you, and I promise you that death is too good for them.  But the Mikado's interests take precedence over all else."  
    "Even innocent lives."  
    "Yes.  You know that.  You're being wilfully stupid.  I told you, Jin, that I would let this continue only so long as it was separate from the Mikado's interests.  Now the line has been crossed.  Your private adventures are over.  It's time you accept your role and stop trying to construct a new one."  
    A long pause.  Then, quietly, "Did you tell them it was me?"  
    "No."  Mon shifted his weight and shook his head with palpable frustration.  "Those men deserved extermination.  You're stubborn and foolish, but you don't deserve punishment for trying to seek justice.  But I can't protect you forever, Jin.  This is the last time I cover for your indiscretions.  It's shocking how many times you've skirted execution.  No matter how many times I try to teach you patience or acceptance or even coolheadedness, my lessons seem to fall on deaf ears.  Perhaps the only way you'll learn is if there's no one there to catch you when you fail."  
    Another long pause.  "Thank you, sir.  For not telling them what really happened."  
    Mon shook his head but didn't say anything.  Jin could tell he wanted to say more, but the older man just sighed.  "Sometimes it's like having a teenage son."  
    "Sir?"  
    "You.  I can see all the mistakes you're making, but no matter how I try to get through to you, you won't stop.  And yet, like any father, I can see my own younger self in you, too, so part of me understands, even sympathizes."  Seeming suddenly weary, Mon leaned up against a tree and folded his arms.  "I can see you racing straight for a cliff, Taiga.  I've been able to see it since the moment you entered training.  Your father would make comments about you and I could already tell how things would play out.  I hope for your sake that Prince Chagum ascends the throne before you make your final mistake.  The emperor already regards you with suspicion.  Ever since your first major error, right after I promoted you.  He sees you as insubordinate and unpredictable.  That incident with the herbalist didn't help your reputation, either."  
    "Tanda?  Why?"  
    "Because of his association with the Yaku, and with the spearwielder.  You tread a dangerous path, Taiga.  I worry for you."  
    Jin frowned.  He was startled and bothered by this frank talk from the man he had ever regarded with awe and respect, who had helped him more than anyone to fit into the role of Hunter.  Mon was usually not so open.  He also didn't use his hunters' real names unless he meant to drive in a point with absolute gravity.  Jin wondered if something had happened that his boss wasn't telling him, something to make him think that-  "Sir... does the Mikado suspect I was behind this?"  
    "I honestly don't know, Jin.  The Master Star Reader asked some questions I found odd.  He definitely knows more than he lets on.  I would be wary if I were you."  
    "I understand, Okashira.  Thank you for letting me know."  
    He turned to go, but felt Mon's hand on his arm.  He turned.  "Okashira?"  
    "Taiga.  I mean it.  Be careful."  
    Jin's brow furrowed.  Whatever Mon was worried about, it was obviously very, very serious.  He gave a single solemn nod and said, "I will, sir." 


End file.
